


Apocatastasis

by The Rose Mistress (Semilune)



Series: Hear, Feel, Think [8]
Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Amaurot (Final Fantasy XIV), Amaurotine Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Ancient but Advanced, Ascians (Final Fantasy XIV), Complicated Relationships, Eventual Romance, Except like, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Fluff and Smut, Hijinks & Shenanigans, M/M, Magic, Male Slash, Mild Smut, Multi, Past Lives, Red String of Fate, References to Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, Reincarnation, Slice of Life, Slow Burn, Soul Sex, Soulmates, Students, as in everyone is tied by it
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-07
Updated: 2019-10-09
Packaged: 2020-11-26 22:55:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,149
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20938112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Semilune/pseuds/The%20Rose%20Mistress
Summary: ✦ SHADOWBRINGERS SPOILERS! Please do not read unless up-to-date on patch (5.0).Chapter One = T.o.C. and Character/Shard Key.  Adult (18+) writing.★ Chapter Four: "Unchanging, Everchanging"It was nonsense to assume that everyone in Amaurot loved each other, but—In a perfect world, where was the sense in making enemies?NSFW, warning for soul-sex (M/M) and thoughts of soul-sex (F/M/M). :')-Amaurotine AU, Akadaemia Anyder "University AU."Turning everyone Amaurotine!Were these characters Unsundered? Let's pretend they were!Time for more stars and flowers and pining and OT3 NONSENSE!Self-indulgent, Past Lives, Immortal Friendship.  Drabbles but connected.  Rating subject to change because, knowing me, smut of some format will probably happen.  Multi-POV likely.  I'm sure I'm not the only one to have this idea, but I hope my version is enjoyable!★✧ ☄ ☽Apocatastasis —"Reconstitution, restitution, or restoration to the original or primordial condition.  An interpretation divides apocatastasis into three types of restorations — those involving the virtuous individual, nature, and the sinful powers of the soul."☾ ☄ ✧★





	1. Foreword & Table of Contents

**Author's Note:**

> Aw shit here we go again ...

☽** Foreword **☾

Apocatastasis —  
"Reconstitution, restitution, or restoration to the original or primordial condition. An interpretation divides apocatastasis into three types of restorations — those involving the virtuous individual, nature, and the sinful powers of the soul."

I've been yearning to start a "University AU" for FFXIV for several months now ... and wanting to mess around with Amaurotine past lives besides ... WHY NOT BOTH? :'D AND SO HERE I AM, writing self-indulgent nonsense based on the dynamics in ["Astral Fire, Umbral Heart."](https://archiveofourown.org/works/12599668/chapters/28699292) As a result, this stars the Amaurotine version of my WoL, Samantha. 

Seriously guys, this is just gonna be a sandbox of fluff.

Thank you, as always, for reading!

* * *

☙ **Table of Contents** ❧

* * *

☄ **Apocatastasis **☄

  1. **Foreword & Table of Contents**  
You are here!
  2. **Antediluvian**  
“I was just asking that very same thing,” Hades complained. “But she,” he jerked his chin in emphasis, eyes like buttery dawnlight flashing crossly, “Takes far too much pleasure in ignoring me.”  
“As do we all,” drawled Hythlodaeus.
  3. **Thou art Thyself  
**In a world where individuality hardly matters, eyes are the windows to the soul.
  4. **Unchanging, Everchanging  
**_NSFW, warning for soul-sex (M/M) and thoughts of soul-sex (F/M/M)._ Souls can entwine in several ways.****  
It was nonsense to assume that everyone in Amaurot loved each other, but—  
In a perfect world, where was the sense in making enemies? 

* * *

❦

* * *

**Character Key **[with Source Shard in brackets]**  
**Information on mythology referenced from my brain and Wikipedia.

☄** Nyx** [Samantha]  
— Goddess of the Night. "Black Night." And of the Night were born Aether and Day.

☄** Erebus** [Aymeric]  
— "Place of darkness between Earth and Hades." Personification of deep darkness and shadows.

☄** Tartarus** [Estinien]  
— "Deep Abyss," dungeon of torment and suffering for the wicked. Prison of the Titans.

☄ **Hades** [Emet-Selch, remained Unsundered]  
— "The Unseen One." God of the Dead and King of the Underworld.

☄ **Orpheus** [G'raha]  
— Noted for his ability to charm all things, even stones, with his music. Legendary Musician, Poet, and Prophet. 

☄ **Hythlodaeus** [???]**  
— **“Expert of Nonsense." In Thomas More's "Utopia" serves as guide to Utopia, of which the capital is Amaurot. 

☄ **Apollo** [Alphinaud]  
— God of several things, notably Medicine, Healing, Youth, Light, Art, and Protection. Wards off evil.

☄ **Artemis** [Alisaie]  
— Twin of Apollo, Maiden Goddess of the Hunt, Wilderness, Moon, and Chastity. Protector of young girls.

☄ **Calliope** [Minfilia]  
— Muse presiding over Eloquence and Epic Poetry, noted for the "Ecstatic Harmony" of her voice. "Chief of all Muses."


	2. Antediluvian

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I was just asking that very same thing,” Hades complained. “But she,” he jerked his chin in emphasis, eyes like buttery dawnlight flashing crossly, “Takes far too much pleasure in ignoring me.”
> 
> “As do we all,” drawled Hythlodaeus.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The self-indulgent experiment begins. The WoL and her friends (and lovers and enemies) in a long-lost life. :)

* * *

✧ ☄ ☽

There was nothing she loved more than gazing at the stars.

Well, coaxing things to _grow _came in close second. But losing herself in the veil of the night was her favorite escape, mapping the glimmering constellations. The penumbral glow of the moon pulled her in, icy and scalding all at once. In that black velvet backdrop, the astral pinpricks seemed all the brighter, all the _lighter—_

A hand tugged her back by the cowl, and she barked in surprise.

“For shame,” lectured a voice far smoother than any kind of honey. “Unhooded _and _unmasked? If our mentors saw you now—”

She swept around to face him, shoving her dimly glowing hair behind her ears. “_Erebus_,” she hissed. “I swear upon the heavens, if you keep _sneaking up on me like that, _I might melt you to a crisp next time.”

His eyes sparkled at her through the almond-shaped gaps in his black domino. They were the shade of ice, white-blue and animalistic, refracting every shimmer of the moon and stars above. _Beautiful against his rose gold skin—_ “I would love to see you try,” he taunted. He made a point of letting his stare rove across her face. “I so adore it when you scorn the rulebook.”

She scoffed and pushed him back with both hands. “Foul monster,” she grumbled. Her fingers scrambled to replace the aetherical shell that now dangled by its ribbons against her décolletage. She clasped the pearlescent mask back up against her cheekbones and let her lips curl into a bitter smirk. “Happy now?”

Erebus chuckled, silk on velvet. “Not in the slightest.” He lifted a hand to tuck back a strand of her suddenly gilt-and-amber hair, letting his fingers linger at the tip of her ear.

She knew she was embarrassed by the twist in her belly, but especially the way her stardust flared; the way the faintly golden luminosity from her skin and hair flickered, going brighter. A curl of his soul stretched out tentatively to caress her, iridescent as a comet. Her guard was down. She let a wisp of her blazing darkness spark and twine around it for one fleeting instant before recoiling. 

“_Erebus.”_ She lunged to shove him bodily again, yanking up the weight of her cowl. “_Stop it.”_

His dusky pink lips twitched into the ghost of a smile and he shrugged. “Perseverance is a virtue.”

“And wickedness a sin,” she huffed.

Wreathed in characteristic blushing banter, the pair of friends marched back to the fringes of the city. Neither one of them was surprised when, at the gates to the outermost district, a taller figure loomed to join them. His voice was full of barely-hidden mirth, silver mask gleaming in the glare of the streetlamps.

“Off necking in the wilderness again?” he joked, knowing full well that they had never done such a thing. His heavy robes swished as he loped in close. Eyes dark as a cosmos of midnight shone down at them, self-satisfied. Such a boorish, egotistical loudmouth. _All of them are, really—_

Erebus laughed loudly and fell in natural stride beside his best friend. “Much though I would wish it—”

_“I will kill you both,”_ she grumbled, moving faster to escape them.

“You stirred her ire, Erebus,” said the other, his low voice catching in a growl.

“As ever,” agreed the accused. An exaggerated sigh passed his lips. “For how many sunsets do you suppose she will avoid me?”

“At least a handspan,” grunted the other.

“_I can hear you_,” she yowled.

It was late, but citizens still wandered the peaceful streets, making leisurely returns to their homes and apartments. As the three of them rounded through the districts, she sprinted farther ahead, determined to avoid her more-than-eager tormenters. 

In so doing, she arrived at campus well ahead of them.

She tramped down the path toward the Akadaemia dormitories alone. Just when she was walking through the garden of her quad, lulled into the fleeting relief of regaining her coveted solitude, she was rudely interrupted.

“Prowling the metropolis without your detail tonight?”

Slick and sharp, a subtle jab. She groaned and avoided looking at him. “Not now, Hades,” she grumbled.

She could feel him lurking up beside her, nonetheless. “How did you manage to escape your hounds?”

“Not now,_ Hades_—”

From the shrubbery between two nearby residential buildings, someone sprang forth, making an ungodly sound. Her heart plunged through her stomach as the person scuttled toward them at a terrifying pace, cowl pulled up high to hide and shadow their mask. Hades thrust himself behind her as though to use her as a shield and she curled around to clutch him in reflex, pulse racing. “Holy heavens,” she hissed.

The scuttling person was cackling, scampering around them, wailing like a banshee.

“Orpheus, what in calamity are you _doing?”_ A white-masked figure calmly approached from another end of the patio, chin as pale as Hades shaking beneath his cowl.

The harasser scurried up to his fresh target. “Good evening, Hythlodaeus,” he said, his voice oozing music and mischief. He straightened up to finally reveal the golden half-mask beneath his hood, his flushed, tanned skin glowing sunnily. “Lovely weather, is it not?”

Hades groaned, disentangling himself from his unwitting buffer. “Orpheus?” She could almost hear the squint in his voice. “How in the _world_ did you manage to conceal your soul from me?”

“My sight _is _sharper,” Hythlodaeus heckled, and Hades glared at him as the imp simpered in the background.

“You were simply distracted,” supplied Orpheus, wagging a knowing finger. Then he crossed his arms. Playful turquoise eyes glittered out at the two he successfully petrified. “Where are Erebus and Tartarus?”

“I was just asking that very same thing,” Hades complained. “But _she_,” he jerked his chin in emphasis, eyes like buttery dawnlight flashing crossly, “Takes far too much pleasure in _ignoring me.”_

“As do we all,” drawled Hythlodaeus.

“Goodness,” came a dark, rich voice. Erebus again. She sighed and slouched and glanced across her shoulder to find him sauntering over with the other. “What are we inadvertently interrupting?”

“A convocation of morons,” she groused.

Tartarus roared with laughter, and there was the sound of a window sliding open as yet _another_ person interjected. A loud groan echoed down from overhead. “I should have known,” rang a clear, stern, harmonious timbre. “Could the lot of you chuckleheads keep it quiet? Some of us have class in the morning.”

Six pairs of eyes drifted up to find a head hanging out of a dormitory window, mask and cowl discarded.

Apollo had porcelain skin far pearlier than her mask, scintillant as starlight. His short-cropped, near-colorless hair always seemed imbued with the tawny heat of sunbeams—and the gemlike cerulean of his eyes did, besides.

“Go back to bed, then,” Tartarus shouted.

Apollo scowled down at him. “Not so easy to do when six hellions are tumbling around in the courtyard,” he lectured. “And some of you are _in my selfsame conjuring session—_”

Another head poked out beside him, shoving him over. They were, quite literally, identical twins. “Out of the way, numbskull,” she grumbled, her radiant hair also cut pixie-close. 

“How did you get in here?” Apollo was asking, appalled, but Artemis was focused only on the girl looking up at her in horror.

“Nyx,” Artemis yelled, grimacing down at her with force. “Stop blustering around with those cretins and get your backside upstairs _before I come drag you there myself._” She leaned further out the window. “I have an assessment at daybreak and if you keep me from sleeping—”

“Coming,” she was croaking, scrambling for the door. The locking system recognized her aether and unlatched, allowing her inside. The throng behind her was still jostling in the square, poking fun at each other.

She took the stairs a pair at a time, bounding up two flights. As one of the oldest structures on campus, this dormitory was not outfitted with an elevator—but it was only possessed of four stories, so the Bureau of the Architect had never seen fit to upgrade the facilities.

Floor three was for masculine-identifying residents. She crept her way to the room that Apollo and Orpheus shared, trying not to make a sound. She knocked softly on the door and cleared her throat. “It is I.”

A mild scuffle inside and then a twin was filling up the doorframe. Apollo. “Nyx,” he said, voice slightly cracking. He coughed. “Lovely to see you tonight. Or any time, really—”

Artemis made a noise of disgust and pushed him so hard he nearly fell to the floor. “Stop slobbering over her,” she spat, kneeing him in the haunches. He yelped and vanished back into the room as she strode across the threshold. “Where were you?” Artemis asked, dragging the door shut behind her. “I was starting to get worried.”

The twin was already dressed in simple nightclothes, no doubt long done with her bedtime routine. Nyx unfastened her mask, letting it hang around her neck again. “My spot,” she provided, pulling down her cowl. Her heart fluttered with excitement. “I think I came up with an idea for a new genus of flower.”

Her friend matched step beside her. They kept their voices down as they moved back toward the stairwell. “I should have known,” Artemis sighed. “Though I half suspected you were finally having some kind of _secret illicit rendezvous _with one of our halfwit colleagues.” She let the key words drag out.

As they started up to the fourth floor, Nyx scoffed and elbowed her dear roommate in the ribs. “Stop it,” she muttered. “You know I would never be able to live that down.” They turned down the hallway to their room, and she felt her face crinkle at the prospect—at the ridicule and mockery that would be sure to follow. “If one knows, they _all know.”_

“True,” said Artemis, elbowing her in retribution. “But you should pursue what you _crushingly desire—”_

Nyx elbowed her harder. “_Stop it._”

“Then again,” Artemis was musing aloud, humor thick in her tone. “If the fear of _them_ prevents you, I can say without a doubt that my brother would offer his privacy—the whole of his aether besides—”

“_I swear to the end of creation—_”

The door next to theirs hinged open silently, and a meek, beautiful face peeked out to blink at them blearily. Calliope rubbed her eyes as long, petal pink hair slipped over her shoulder. “What time is it?”

Artemis wheezed with embarrassment. “Go back to sleep,” she whispered, unlocking their dorm with a pulse of her aether.

Nyx met Calliope’s gentle, blush-colored stare with a glance of apology. “Sorry,” she also whispered.

Calliope only smiled. “Sweet dreams,” she said pleasantly, closing her door.

Artemis and Nyx crowded in across their own threshold. True to prediction, Artemis immediately flopped upon her bed, cramming herself beneath the covers. “Try not to take too long in the washroom,” she muttered. “I really do need to _try _to get some rest tonight.”

Nyx hummed in affirmation and shambled over to the closet, shrugging off her outer robes and hanging them neatly inside. She hooked her pearly mask on its peg, careful not to disturb the other. Artemis wore a brassy, bronze domino—a contrast to her brother’s, which was the palest sheen of twinkling blue sky.

She moved through the darkness toward her end of the apartment. Luckily, her hair and skin had stopped blazing the instant she relaxed, which was always more like the instant she returned to one of the twins. 

As she clicked a lamp to light and finished her nightly routine, Nyx surveyed herself in the mirror.

Coppery cinnamon skin. Sunset eyes. Obsidian hair when it wasn’t _melting_, glowing like honey-and-magma. Yes, there were streaks of gilt here and there—an amber-and-ocher translucence in her stare—a freckling like gold-leaf across her cheekbones. But largely she was the color of _fire._

She met the gaze of her reflection and thought back on that new concept of a flower.

Layers of petals that ruffled like so many skirts on a dress. All sorts of colors, of course; one could never have enough color. And perhaps another element of beauty and allure? Maybe a delicate fragrance, to enrapture another realm of the senses? 

But something so tempting would need a measure of protection—

She shed her plainclothes and changed into a nightgown, shutting out the lamp, climbing into her own bed. The coverlet was warm and soft and welcoming and as she sank against her pillow, she sighed.

Maybe the answer would come to her in a dream. Maybe not.

Either way, she shut her eyes, and decided to wait until the light.

☾ ☄ ✧

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm really excited to play in this sandbox, you guys ...  
We'll see what kind of plot takes shape!
> 
> But seriously. This is just gonna be a sandbox of fluff.


	3. Thou art Thyself

* * *

✧ ☄ ☽

They say that eyes are windows to the soul.

Nyx always had a particular fondness for eyes. 

She could rattle on for hours about the eyes of her friends; their respective splendors, head to toe. She saw something terribly stunning in all of them. It was part of the wonder of taking off the mask, part of the rarity of witnessing someone unhooded—to behold that _individual,_ in their fullness. Individuality wasn’t important in Amaurot.

That didn’t stop Nyx from loving it—from loving the people she admired, for exactly the _singular entities _they were.

She had known Hades the longest. As a result, she knew his eyes like the back of her hand; could recollect every facet of sun-and-buttercup in perfect, excruciating detail.

_Would you _please_ not liken my _eyeballs_ to _buttercups?

But what was better than a flower, to describe a facet of beauty?

_Something _else_, by the stars. Anything but _flowers.

Oh, but _Hades,_ flowers are the stars of the _meadows—_

_I hope you realize how _topsy-turvy_ you sound—_

Hades and Hythlodaeus were nearly inseparable, but she knew the latter less closely. His eyes were a pale shade of gold mixed with springtime, the slightest hint of jade. A verdant steppe dappled and blinded with daylight, by her reckoning. 

Hythlodaeus never minded when she compared him to plants.

_What type of leaves, exactly, would you say came to mind?_

The type that made her smile, time and time again.

Her second oldest friends were the twins. 

Artemis and Apollo had the same exact colors of eyes, albeit the shades shone in slightly different rations. Sapphire and cerulean, they shimmered like crystalline oceans or the sky at high noon. There were not many blue blooms in nature, but water was critical nourishment for flora. 

Sometimes Artemis flicked her dead in the mask for staring, for losing herself in that tide of a stare.

_Would you _please _not _ogle me _like that?_

Nyx could hardly help it. There was comfort to be had there. Solace. 

Loyalty and gentleness and something very _safe_.

Heavens, but she loved to be with the twins. 

The three of them said they were family—which of course made Apollo’s crush on Nyx all the _stranger_, but how could that be helped? It was only natural to be attracted to those you cared for. She supposed her soul was drawn to the both of them, too, if she got right down to the heart of the matter.

Orpheus had eyes that reminded her of the twins. Safe and warm, but also slightly _wild._

Contrastingly _dangerous_, come to think of it. But then he was wild and treacherous on the daily, so why would his eyes not reflect that? Windows to the soul, in every way.

Turquoise like summer and springtime, caught on the line right between blue and green. A sprig trapped just beneath the surface of a pond; a weed growing deep in the sea. _Enthralling, _really, not that she would say that. He would never let her forget it, if she paid him such a tribute.

_Was it not you that called my eyes enthralling? Oh Nyx, my Nyx, let me try to _enthrall_ you—_

Not a threat to be taken lightly.

Enthralling, though, best described the eyes of _Calliope_.

But _stars_, Calliope was lovely. The loveliest creature, in all ways like a flower. She was made of sweet petal-pink colors she hid beneath her cowl, so enchanting to see in the rare times she revealed them.

_You only say that because you love anything to do with buds and petals—_

Her eyes could always be seen, thank the heavens. Framed by the dusky cherry of her mask, her blush-colored gaze was so gentle and fond. Always, always, always so tender. 

Heartwarming, the very definition.

_Nyx, this blossom reminds me of a sunburst! What a spectacular creation—_

The opposite of heartwarming was chilling. But not quite _coldblooded_.

Tartarus had eyes that seemed unfeeling, dark like pits of midnight—only suited for a nightbloom. All that was missing were the stars. She teased him about that once, searching his black azure abyss of a stare. 

But where had he put the moon and constellations?

He threw back his cowl and shook out his glittering hair. Silver and certainly semilunar.

Tartarus was quiet and hard to get close to, but he liked her. She considered that a blessing in a sense.

It was also something of a curse, because with Tartarus came Erebus.

And oh.

Then there was _Erebus._

Something about his eyes was _cosmic__._

They pulled her right in. It was different than anyone, anyone _else._

There was a _gravity _to his stare; something well and truly magnetic. It was like stardust and comets and diamonds all at once, every facet of cold astral light. And he _tried _to make her lost in them—he _sought her out_ and _followed,_ refused to leave her _alone_.

_Would you liken me to a green thing?_

A green thing? Why a green thing? She wanted to know.

_I learned that you did it for most of the others. What type of plant would I be?_

His hands, the most beautiful hands, pulled back the fringe of his hood; and then his cowl had fallen, revealing hair like the feathers of ravens. Black and glossy, but filled with iridescence; orchid and cobalt and plum and pomegranate—

And then he unlaced the ribbon of his domino, letting it fall, and—

His _eyes._

They were _free._

It was almost like something shattered inside her. Like something _came apart, _but …

He was a blossom of velvet. Rich and gorgeous but _piercing,_ darkly and deeply compelling.

I can think of no blooms to describe you, Erebus.

How he had smiled.

_Would you make one? A blossom for me?_

* * *

She woke before the sun arose, breathing hard.

_Eudicots, rosids, rosales, rosaceae—_

_Rosoideae, roseae, rosa—_

Before the sun_—_

A _rose._

Woody, perennial. Might be a shrub or a climber, maybe trailing. Arm it with spurs, thorns barbed to catch. Let the flowerets be splendid, lacy and frilled; alluring and fragrant, velvet and arresting.

A bloom, a blossom, budding for—

She blushed.

_Stars in heaven._

The details were forgotten, but she knew what she had dreamt. 

Nothing could dispel the way her skin prickled; the way she was _ardently glowing._ Every nerve was on fire. Light pulsed and rippled from her body, and when she curled to a sit, the hair that slipped down across her shoulders was golden-amber and _molten._

The details were forgotten, but she knew the _gist_ of her dream. Knew exactly why she _ached._

Knew who came to visit and left behind the name for his flower.

His name escaped her lips as a hot flare of breath.

_Erebus._

☾ ☄ ✧

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ’Tis but thy name that is my enemy;  
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.  
What’s Montague? It is nor hand nor foot,  
Nor arm nor face, nor any other part  
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!  
What’s in a name? That which we call a rose  
By any other word would smell as sweet;  
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,  
Retain that dear perfection which he owes  
Without that title.
> 
> \- Romeo and Juliet, Act II, Scene II


	4. Unchanging, Everchanging

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was nonsense to assume that everyone in Amaurot loved each other, but—
> 
> In a perfect world, where was the sense in making enemies?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NSFW, warning for implications of soul-sex (M/M) and thoughts of soul-sex (F/M/M). :')
> 
> Facets of undying love and friendship. WoL/Hades POV, Erebus/Tartarus POV, and vaguely Artemis (and friends) POV. WoL/Hades (complicated), Erebus/Tartarus [Aymeric/Estinien] (complicated), everyone being buddies. Souls can entwine in several ways.

* * *

✧ ☄ ☽

It was nonsense to assume that everyone in Amaurot _loved _each other, but—

In a perfect world, where was the sense in making _enemies?_

Indeed, as those who enjoyed the Hall of Rhetoric could attest, there was a time and place for every difference, and a time and place _beyond_—always reasonable resolution. Disagreements and divergence bred _discussions_, never resentment. For what good came from resentment, in the end? Why allow such a bittering grip to take hold of the soul, when there was so much to be gained from discourse?

And so, in Amaurot, deviation was a treatise. Always, they _heard_, and they _listened_. 

Nyx and her friends were no exception. For all the uniformity their culture encouraged, each young academic flooded discretely with passions. Oh, how she _loved _when they explored them, each talent so fierce and so _bright_.

Hades loved _making things_. 

She could watch him for time undying as he fiddled with creation, large or small scale.

It was he who inspired her to try it herself—though she kept herself limited to minor vegetation. And it was Hades she thought of even as she teased out the sketch of the floweret for Erebus. Nyx escaped to the outskirts of town just after the conjury lecture, tucked away in her small, not-so-hidden patch of garden.

Someone crept up beside her and held out a pair of pale, cupped hands. 

“Behold,” Hades muttered, unclasping them.

A delicate creature fluttered forth, alighting on one of her flowers. Nyx drank in every exquisite detail—fragile abdomen and thorax, spindly legs delicate as a dancer, long proboscis like the tendril of a fern unfurling to lap from the nectar of the blossom. Painted-glass wings trembled, surely fashioned from petals themselves—

“_Oh_,” she exhaled, amber light pulsing all around her. She knew every iota of her body was radiant, the heat of the glow escaping past her cowl. But this was Hades. He knew she adored him. He had seen the full force of it too many times to count. “It—this creature is _marvelous_,” she breathed, glancing up at the scarlet of his mask, tucking back her distractingly fiery hair. “Please tell me you submitted it to the Words of Lahabrea—”

“I am still in the process of perfecting it,” he muttered, crouching down beside her. The two of them leaned shoulder to shoulder and watched the diminutive beast flutter by. “But by my reckoning, there can never be an _overabundance _of pollinators.” Shrewd golden eyes flicked to take her in, a smile, a grin held behind them. “In the case I need an argument to support me, I know to whom I can turn.”

She beamed at him widely and nudged him with a tilt of her body, and he answered with a heavy slump of his own. “Ever and always,” came her assurance. “Anything at all for my dearest buttercup.”

He groaned and drooped against her harder, outwardly sarcastic, but she felt the frond of his aether that stretched forth to meet her. A current of gold, strong and coursing, threaded through with Tyrian purple and cerise—blazing dawn with an afterthought of nightfall. Shafts of him gleamed into the messy molten twilight that was _her,_ and she eagerly allowed it; opened her heart and mind and soul for that intimate embrace.

A cloud passed the sun, casting them in shadow. The fringes of their masks lightly clacked as they leaned the temples of their faces together; as both pairs of eyes closed to the world outside, in favor of witnessing _within_.

_Are you well? How goes recitation? Did you sleep last night—did you take your breakfast—_

_Hush, Nyx._

She slouched and sighed. The volcanic ash of her aether was sparking, catching on fire, and the heavy gold of his was tamping it down—the smothering veil of his soul, scooping and sweeping and _soothing_.

_Worry for yourself_, his heart was saying, the hands of his essence combing through her like fingertips raking down a scalp. _I am well enough_.

She scoffed through her mouth. Her coals and embers stirred against his smooth aurum; caught ablaze in flames to lick and smoke along the shafts of his light. Ash and fire and darkness, speared through with adamant gilt. 

_Long as we live, I will worry for you, Hades._

His turn to scoff. 

He nestled his face more closely, scraping their masks together again. _And I you, you rattling hamper of chaos._

* * *

❅ ☾ ✧ ☽ ❅

Long albino talons clashed with black, and Erebus roared with laughter.

A mass of inky plumage whirled to knock his combatant from the sky.

“Get _off _of me,” Tartarus bellowed.

Far out in the wilderness, a full morning’s journey from the outermost district of Amaurot, two sets of robes had long been forsaken. Now the two old friends took the shapes of things beautiful and foul—amalgamations, a pet concept they were trying. Silver and black, they crashed through the air, half-man, half-monster. 

Both pairs of forelimbs were now overlong, become wide and feathered with pinions. Both pairs of hindlimbs back-bended, tapered at avian toes with long claws. The hominid arrangements of their torsos remained, humanoid from hipbones to scalps of their heads, but hair and skin were frilled with rows and scatterings of plumes and quills, trailing through their creases and edges. 

“Too slow,” Erebus taunted, catching the other with a cruelly hooked nail.

Tartarus yowled and the two of them hurtled toward the ground. 

It was dangerous, which of course made it even more thrilling.

Later, beastly features and feathers dispelled, the two of them were lounging, talking at the fringe of the meadow, sprawled side by side. “You have eerily similar souls,” Erebus murmured. His hair was splayed like a halo of darkness on the grass, his blush-gold skin rosy with contentment. His pale eyes drifted shut as the glittering abyss that was Tartarus wrapped around him, completely enfolding.

At the incorporeal sensation, Erebus arched; slotted into the arms that were offered. Tartarus dragged him to the warm, bronze cushion of his chest; stretched against the forest floor as Erebus molded his backbone to the plane of his long stomach. 

“I know that,” rumbled Tartarus. 

Mere _moments_ after weaving their auras together, and he _already _felt so much _calmer_. Tartarus released a long breath; parsed himself through the crystalline light that Erebus willingly provided, ice-blue and blinding. The two of them meshed their souls together as close and as tightly as possible. 

“I coaxed her to show me long ago,” Tartarus was goading, the choking smoke of his aether swirling darker. “But given the observation, I assume you managed to cajole her to entwine?”

Erebus chuckled a velvety chuckle. “Not in the slightest.” The wintry gleam of his stardust flared, shoving through every mote of darkness in Tartarus. “Merely a touch, in all truth. The barest of gestures.”

“She is not so eager to share herself,” the other agreed, his voice a low growl. “And why should she? Between Hades and the Twins, and I daresay Calliope, she can have no need for either of us.”

“I wonder which of us she likes better,” Erebus muttered, and then he was completely engulfed in warm darkness. His chin was tilted up by a hand still too hastily shapeshifted, still growing downy tufts of feathers.

“You, no doubt,” hypothesized Tartarus. He craned his neck to brush their lips together, and Erebus curved into the physical caress; laced their tongues together eagerly, _desperately_. The light inside him blazed and sparkled, gleaming through the other’s billowing shadows.

Erebus rolled so that he was furled over his companion. Long, raven hair curtained down to frame the golden-brown cheeks of Tartarus, mingled with tangles of silver spread and fanned upon the grass. 

“So quick to make assumptions,” Erebus purred. His lips, plush and blushing, snagged on the mouth below. Tartarus smiled and grunted. He could feel the pitch of his soul oozing like tar, pulling hungrily on the untouchable shafts of brightness that made up Erebus, seeking to devour him for all he was wholly _unconsumable_.

“What do you suppose she would say if she saw us now?”

Erebus laughed aloud at that; smoothed both of his hands down the bare column of his lover’s waist; hooked his thumbs at the sharp angles of his hips. “She would say nothing,” he predicted. “Only go fully aglow.”

“Wicked,” Tartarus chuckled. His own palms tracked paths along Erebus; down the cherished slope of his spine, to linger at the curve of his backside. “What would she be thinking, then?”

Erebus hummed in thought. “Perhaps a dream of joining in,” he suggested, indulging himself as much as the other. Both souls sang and howled in joint confirmation. They wished it—the addition of that _third._

A sigh escaped Erebus as a groan slipped from Tartarus, the same vision coursing through their aether.

Nyx pressed between them, somehow. The way their worldly shapes collided came second to what was ethereal. The spirit burned hotter than the flesh and _oh_, how they wanted to _catch fire—_to dissolve into her magma and quench it, to take her ash and obsidian and melt it—to be blended whorl for whorl, night and light and twilight altogether.

Both writhed at the communion of their wishes, at the haze that spread behind their eyes. A covetous web settled across their union and Tartarus lunged to kiss Erebus with unhidden desperation. They tangled closer together in the foliage, shaded by the grove, aching arms and bodies intertwining. 

_I love you_, the thrum of two disparate souls in duet, always pining.

* * *

✧ ☽ ✦ ☾ ✧

“Calliope, wait—”

Too late.

Crockery fell from its perch on the shelf and Artemis thrust herself aside to avoid it. Orpheus and Apollo lunged in tandem to catch it, quite literally bashing their heads together.

Masks flew askew. The cookware shattered on the floor and Calliope gasped shrilly. “Oh no!”

A swell of summery _concern_, the flavor of black cherries, swirled through the community kitchen. Calliope’s Emotion swirled around them like the ebb and flow of an ocean, dragging them in, and Orpheus started laughing hysterically. Apollo was readjusting the sky-blue shell on his face, blinking fast. “Heavens.” 

“Too many cooks in the kitchen,” Artemis grumbled, bending over to check on the progress in the oven. The pans of batter were browning very nicely, but then again, why would they not? She had set the dial herself and tempered it with a blast of her own aether. _If you want something done right, do it yourself._

_Remind me not to touch the cake, then_.

She scowled at the thoughts of her brother, always cantering about like sunbeams through her mind. Whenever the two of them were nearby, they were as one essence, incorporeally and effortlessly united in a way that was actually impossible to prevent. Their souls were too similar—as alike as they were unlike.

Artemis sighed through her nose. 

_Half of the cake will be crammed down your gullet by sundown and you know it._

Apollo chuckled.

Calliope was on her hands and knees, scraping the broken hunks together, eyes glistening with the beginnings of tears. Orpheus was tutting, kneeling beside her. “Lovely Calliope, I beg you would not cry over a casserole dish,” he said sweetly, golden mask flickering in the lamplight.

“She cries over anything broken,” Artemis said. The remark was a fact and not biting in the slightest.

In evidence, Calliope was nodding enthusiastically. “I like things to be whole, you see—”

“Then do allow me to assist,” came an interloping voice.

The small crowd of cooks glanced up to find Hythlodaeus, his steppe-yellow eyes gleaming behind the pure white of his mask. “I am terribly good at mending.” He lifted an arm and his sleeve dipped back in heavy folds, revealing a very pale palm that was glowing. 

One by one, the pieces of porcelain lifted in a cascade, floating over through the air.

“I could do that too, you know,” Artemis said under her breath.

“We all could,” argued Apollo.

Hythlodaeus laughed and flicked his fingers, and the tureen was reconstituted, set safely aside on the counter. “What are the four of you making, in any case?”

“Cake,” Orpheus sang. 

Hythlodaeus smiled at him in bemusement. “Why?”

“Because we can,” Artemis grunted, crossing her arms and squinting at him. “What are _you _doing, exactly?”

“Looking for Hades,” he said nonchalantly. “He vanished this morning after our seminar without the slightest hint of where he planned on going.”

The twins shared a surreptitious glance and immediately schooled their faces and auras to innocence.

“Perhaps you should check Nyx’s garden?” Calliope, actually, genuinely innocent. “I sensed that he wanted to show her something, that he was—” She looked between two pairs of angry, sapphire eyes. “What?”

Orpheus was laughing again, buzzing with intrigue. “Oh?”

A thoughtful hum from Hythlodaeus. “A fair theory, but,” and the skin beneath the white of his mask, nearly just as colorless, flushed pink. “I do not know the way.”

The air around Orpheus rippled like a mirage. “Neither do I,” he admitted, now fairly prickling with excitement. “Shall we form a merry party and barge in?”

“No,” Artemis snapped. She frowned. “The garden is her haven. Let her take you there herself.”

Orpheus pouted and Hythlodaeus blushed a bit darker. “If my search must come to an end, might I employ myself with the baking endeavor?”

“By all means,” said Apollo, strolling over. “My next lecture approaches and I would do well to gather my notes.”

He had long departed by the time the pans came out of the oven. Frosting was blended and stirred—butter, cream, and sugar; infusion of vanilla. Calliope lobbied to tint it purple, but the rest wanted shades of their own. Thus, the buttercream was rationed into four separate portions. Rainbow smears of icing covered mask and skin alike by the time the cake was finished, the mark of all four on the treat they created. 

Artemis tapped her chin and then slathered a big cobalt dollop on the top—a fresh, fifth color in honor of their missing representative. “There,” she muttered. “Now Apollo has no reason to complain.”

Orpheus was snickering and snorting. “It looks absolutely horrendous,” he wheezed. “Like the vomit of a painting.”

“That it does,” Hythlodaeus agreed, dipping a spoon in the remainder of his frosting and eating it plain. “Should we cut a slice to see how it tastes?”

A vigorous nod from Calliope; a loud and evident pulse of anticipation from inside her. “Yes, please!”

Plate and knife were fetched, and a wedge was eased from the monstrosity. Four forks dug into the buttercream and crumbles. The slice was gone in nary a handful of blinks. Sounds of pleasure and appreciation were uttered. Gestures of approval were made. Hythlodaeus raised both of his thumbs and Calliope smiled at him while icing stained her teeth. Artemis went to search for a drink.

“Well,” Orpheus declared. “That certainly tasted far better than vomit.”

☾ ☄ ✧

* * *

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm imagining Fey or Eladrin from the Feywild when I think about the Ancients! Beautiful and Beastly all at once <3

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please feel free to leave a comment if you liked anything in particular, have suggestions, or any kind of feedback whatsoever! I'm super friendly and I love responding. It's the comments that truly keep me inspired <3


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